Please Help Us Help Her
We are helping our last client in case management who is currently homeless and living in her car get stable housing. She is someone who has a FT job 9 of 12 months and summer she relies on unemployment. Due to the things you already know about the current state of benefits in Iowa, her unemployment benefits are late.
Your loving, generous contribution will help her keep her needs met while we help her navigate unemployment benefits, housing through PHC, her health needs, and food and gas to utilize A/C in her car until she's stable again.
We are a 501(c) 3; your donations are tax deductible - EVERY bit helps.
For Sistahs Currently Experiencing DV
If you are currently experiencing domestic violence - or think you may be - please do the following:
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Find a secure device (one that you KNOW is not being monitored by the perpetrator)
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Reach out 24/7 to the experts at the National Domestic Violence Hotline at that link and chat OR
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Reach out 24/7 to those same experts by calling 800-799-7233
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They can help you:
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accurately identify all types of violence you are experiencing
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get information on the closest help/supports to you
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create or update a safety plan
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IF YOU BELIEVE YOU ARE IN DANGER OF BEING HURT, KIDNAPPED, OR WORSE, CALL 911.
Who We Are
OUR FOUNDING MISSION: To provide holistic supportive services to Black women survivors and their children survivors - as well as information regarding resources for Black women survivors and their children who have experienced domestic violence/intimate partner violence/teen dating violence; promoting pathways of healing through self-reliance and healthy legacy. We were a direct branch of the Courageous Fire, LLC mission to change the narrative for Black women and DV. CFire LLC is solely dedicated to our founder's education of the community. Courageous Access utilized Black professionals in the culturally-responsive services we created for YOU as the survivor and your co-surviving children, including Empowerment through the Arts™ and Youth Healthy Relationships™. The services that we didn't create were vetted by us or Black women around the country and determined to be a safe environment.
OUR CURRENT MISSION:
We have served Black women in NY, MO, FL, TX, OH, and Puerto Rico. We want Black women in every state to know where to find vetted resources during crisis and rebuild as it relates to DV. Therefore, we are excited to announce we are:
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Rebranding any programming and making it available for self-service! This move will eventually make our programming accessible in person throughout the entire country!
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Building our state-specific resources. These will be set up to select your state and see all the vetted crisis and rebuilding resources Black women have found safe and effective.
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Bringing in Local Lived Experience Expert Volunteers. Sistahs, some of you really want to give back - here's your chance! Sign up for this volunteer role. You will need 1 hour to share what you know and 15 mins a month for you check in to share any updates. That's it! This is how we keep the vetted information available for people just like you to know what you knew BEFORE you knew it. Thank you in advance. SIGN UP
In other words, Black women - across our entire and beautiful diaspora, all across the United States, we are STILL here for YOU - #Permission
Our History
Courageous Access Channel
DV Can Be Disrupted - Know the Timeline
8-Stage DV Homicide Timeline
Our Philosophy
Foundation Matters. Our adult decisions are based on what we learn as we build our developmental foundation in childhood. If a Black woman can identify where poisonous relationship expectations were falsely set up as normal and healthy, she and her therapist can disarm those predispositions, recognizing and rejecting future toxic advances in all relationships - intimate partner, family, work, church, and friendships.
CO-Survivors Matter. At Courageous Access, we are committed to always incorporating the latest research into the care of our clients. Our Founding Executive Director attended a conference where the work of Dr. Emma Katz (a non-Black woman in the UK with brilliant, breakthrough interviews of DV survivors) came to her attention. We always knew the DV didn't swerve past the children, but now we have the language to prove it! Children of DV survivors are ALSO co-survivors. Coercive control, physical violence, verbal violence, and sexual violence committed by the perpetrator against the children makes the children co-survivors. And they absolutely matter. That's why we have always targeted their needs in this work. Now that we are armed with this language and truth - watch how much more we target them in this work!
Reparations Matter. As a Black woman, you may have daydreamed about your country suddenly deciding to repay you in usable currency for my lifelong suffering at its hands. We teach survivors how to extract currency following an abusive situation; because the most effective revenge is to make abuse pay you back - reparations, Beautiful.
DV Survivors: What to Do at Each Stage
"We're not early or late to life's circumstances; we're prepared in the moment we're due to arrive"